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Tuesday afternoon, a local elementary school student, Peter Collins, was arrested for bringing a “tornado in a bottle” to school for the annual Denysin Elementary science fair. Authorities were alerted after it was reported that a student had what appeared to be an “atmospheric weapon of destruction” on school grounds. The school was quickly evacuated, as the Denver bomb squad was called in to deal with collecting and neutralizing Collins’ second grade science fair project. Teachers close to Collins noted that Collins was a, “stellar student’ and they were, “shocked to learn someone like that could be capable of doing...

PALMER, Mass., - A Massachusetts woman said officials at her son's school have backed off plans to discipline the kindergartener for bringing a Lego gun on the school bus. Mieke Crane said she was initially told her son would have to write a letter of apology to the school bus driver, serve detention Tuesday and face suspension from the school bus for bringing the Lego gun -- which is slightly larger than a quarter -- on the bus to Old Mill Pond Elementary School in Palmer Friday morning, WGGB-TV, Springfield, Mass., reported Wednesday. "I think they overreacted totally. I totally...

A Suffolk school suspended a second grader for pointing a pencil at another student and making gun noises. Seven-year-old Christopher Marshall says he was playing with another student in class Friday, when the teacher at Driver Elementary asked them to stop pointing pencils at each other. "When I asked him about it, he said, 'Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,'" said Paul Marshall, the boy's father. "It's as simple as that." Christopher's father was a Marine for many years. He thinks school leaders overreacted. "A pencil is a weapon when it...

SUFFOLK, Va. — Two Suffolk second graders have been suspended for making shooting noises while pointing pencils at each other. Media outlets report the 7-year-old boys were suspended for two days for a violation of the Suffolk school system’s zero-tolerance policy on weapons. They were playing with one another in class Friday at Driver Elementary. “When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,’” said Paul Marshall, one of the boys’ fathers. “It’s as simple as that.”

There is a scene in the movie “A Bronx tale” where the father of a young man counsels his son not to attack another young man over a $20.00 debt which has gone unpaid for too long. The father explains this is a small price to discover that someone is not trustworthy. He tells his son to be glad he has been shown how untrustworthy the other man is in this minor matter. “Now you know not to trust him in the future in bigger things,” he says. This small lesson begs the question: Why would we trust school administrators...

A 9-year-old boy’s birthday cupcakes sparked a school controversy that just keeps growing, with scores of people lining up against a school principal who found the cupcake’s topping “inappropriate.” The boy was chided, and so were his parents, for cupcakes featuring little green Army men on the top.

A student from a small Florida town has sued her high school principal, the dean of students and the local school board in federal court because, she claims, she was suspended last year for participating in a popular national “Day of Silence” — a protest against anti-gay bullying. The New Times Broward-Palm Beach, an alternative weekly newspaper, first broke the story. The student, 15-year-old Amber Hatch, claims she sought permission — via a letter — to participate. Shannon Fusco, the principal of DeSoto County High School, turned down the request. “Peaceful protests are against district policy,” Fusco allegedly explained. Fusco...

Today a Genoa-Kingston Middle School student’s parent is claiming that a teacher ordered his son to cover his US Marine themed t-shirt or be suspended. Dan McIntyre says that his son Michael has wore the shirt to school many times in the past and that he is a big fan of the branch of the US military. Dan McIntyre says that, “A teacher noticed the guns on the shirt.” He went on to say that the teacher said there was a school policy against the image of a gun. Michael complied when the teacher asked him to turn the shirt...

(Newser) – There's no way this one could have ended well: An East Texas school's search for the mystery pooper who had five times left feces in the gymnasium led the principal to ask the school nurse to inspect the fourth-graders' underwear. "My kid came home and he said ... his butt had been inspected," complained one parent of a West Sabine Elementary student. That class had been the ones using the gym when the feces appeared, and didn't respond when the principal continually asked who did the deed. She defended the move to KAIT8 News. She says the nurse...

A group of students at a California high school basketball game were told to remove patriotic bandanas and stop chanting “USA, USA” because school administrators wanted to be sensitive to other spectators. The incident occurred during a basketball last week between Camarillo High School and Rio Mesa High School in Ventura County. A school administrator pulled aside four boys and told them to either remove their American flag bandanas or leave the game. The boys complied but returned to lead the crowd in a chant of “USA, USA.” Camarillo High School principal Glenn Lipman told the Ventura County Star that...

The boy, a fifth-grader at Douglas MacArthur Elementary School whose name is not being released, was charged as a juvenile with brandishing a weapon, police said. He was also suspended from school, and Alexandria City Public Schools Superintendent Morton Sherman said further action is being considered, including expulsion. On Monday, the boy showed the plastic gun to at least one other student during a bus ride home from the school. The 10-year-old did not point it at anyone or threaten to shoot it, but he neglected to mention that the weapon was fake, said Alexandria police spokeswoman Ashley Hildebrandt. School...

Yet another student has been suspended for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun. This time, Daniel McClaine, Jr., a freshman at Poston Butte High School in Tan Valley, Arizona, made the mistake of setting a picture of a gun as the desktop background on his school-issued computer. The picture shows an AK-47 lying on a flag, reports KNXV-TV. The gun isn’t his, McClaine assured the ABC affiliate in Phoenix. He found it on the Internet and liked it, partly because he is interested in serving in the military after graduation. A teacher...

WRIGHTSVILLE, Ga. — A dollar store employee has been arrested for simple battery after whipping a customer's child with a belt. WMAZ-TV (http://on.wmaz.com/WGbiFw ) reports surveillance cameras inside a Wrightsville dollar store recorded an 8-year-old boy running around the store and eventually throwing a cookie jar at 39-year-old Emilia Graciela Bell. Authorities say Bell took off her belt, chased the boy down and spanked him behind the counter. The boy's father called police and Bell was taken into custody. Police said she was free on bond Friday.

By Daniel Arkin, NBC News Six students who allegedly assaulted a Richmond, Va., middle school bus driver Tuesday have been arrested and charged, according to the Richmond Police Department. The unidentified students face felony aggravated assault and assault by mob charges, police said. A seventh student was suspended in connection with the incident. Richmond City school administrators said the group of students attacked a bus driver on the way to Albert Hill Middle School at approximately 7:30 a.m. Tuesday morning. The alleged assault left the 55-year-old male bus driver with serious face and head injuries, according to NBC12, a station...

The readings for today’s daily Mass (Monday Nov 12) largely deal with Church order and discipline. Paul in his letter to Titus tells him: For this reason I left you in Crete so that you might set right what remains to be done and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you (Titus 1:5).He adds that among other things, the men he picks be able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents. Later in the letter we learned that people Crete tended to be unruly people and that there were many things that had been left...

Relatives of a 10-year-old boy are asking why the Cypress-Fairbanks school district found it necessary to arrest a fourth-grader after he threw a plastic container at a teacher. The boy, who attends Emmott Elementary School, remained in custody Thursday at the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center, 1200 Congress, in downtown Houston, where community activist Quanell X called a news conference. "You mean to tell me that in 2012 we're now locking away children in elementary school for just disrupting the learning environment?" Quanell said. "The zero tolerance policy should be done away with.".... .....Photos of the boy's classroom, taken by...

Having a REALLY hard time with our family right now. Youngest has ADHD and is REALLY "strong-willed". HATES "authority". Older is sweet and passive. Hubby is passive, as well. Really hard, family dynamic, ATM. Found this vid. Pretty inspiring. Enjoy!

Rather than spend two days in in-school suspension for allegedly letting another student copy her classwork, Taylor Santos, a well-regarded student and athlete at Springtown High School, near Fort Worth, Texas, chose to get paddled.

A Texas schoolgirl is nursing a bruised and 'blistered' behind after she was spanked by her male vice principal. Springtown High School sophomore Taylor Santos was walloped by the teacher after allegedly letting another student copy her work. But her mother, Anna Jorgensen, has complained to the school, furious that they allowed her daughter to be brutally paddled by a man. >snip< The day after her daughter's spanking, Jorgensen called the vice principal to complain but he defended his actions. 'He told me this was normal for her bottom to look like this after receiving swats, and that he was...

Jerry Bailey, a minister in Jackson, Mich., says he feels as if he has been given back his life. It's a dramatic statement -- and the story behind these words is, indeed, pretty extraordinary... It was 2005, and the couple had rung up approximately $92,000 in charges on their credit cards. At one point, they had 17 of them.